In Mandos
by Furius
Summary: Nerdanel in Mandos, a talk with Namo and with Miriel.


In Mandos 

The wife of the fey fire of the Noldor stands outside his ghostly halls, begging silently with her clouded eyes, knowing that he is deaf but not blind. At least, so she hopes.

So long she has stood, so long she has waited, so long it has been Nerdanel thinks herself frozen. Time does not exist for immortals. In this wild space and all its howling and bickering, the raging and the roaring, yet even those do not surpass those she held within the glass that is has became her soul as of late.

Poised in that edge of that dastardly place, neither the hands nor the shoulders tremble. The bivouac in Tuna is dearth, and holds nothing. There is no solace in a maddened populace, and a frigid, confounding calm has settled till the memories and life becomes strange, traces of illusions that might have never been.

A dream in a frantic paradise, oddly soothing, oddly warming- she stays here because the stones and marbles and crystals cannot contain her. Her fingers lost their appetite and her thoughts their logic; she misses something, the flesh of her dream perhaps. 

Where is this dream? Listless feet and wondering eyes leads her here, ever westward, outside this gloomy hall, a transcendent, immovable dark upon the white ground. Glorious contrast of the creator and the created, colors that she would have once laughed at, a place she would have once shuddered in, now she waits, guards.

Occasionally, a fierce wind would rise from the waves from below the sheer cliffs sending the copper red of her hair fluttering behind her so that it seems a trail of blood from afar. This only then, must count as the sign of life within her, for the trial grew longer with each passing year and still she is not answered.

Till in an early morn, a single tear, or is it a single drop of dew that condensed from the strange new weathers slid down her cheek, marking a faint glistening line, landing, finally, at the foot of the steps.

Then the doors swing open.

A miserable key indeed, she thinks, as joints that have not moved for so long found their sync again and the bare feet graces the cold floors. Flying, floating, walking, slipping, running, fire and ice, profound pain and pleasure finds her senses until she becomes acutely aware of each filament and fragment of life within her.

She wants to cry.

The black halls are empty. All the tales are myths, and all the talk hearsay; neither mist nor arrase can hold its own within these dank walls. She should have known, they have told her that he would not care.

Is not the rage of the sea visible? Are not the unfamiliar coldness and stillness of the bodies terribly palpable? Why cannot she believe?

Silent for so long, she cannot speak aloud now. Who is she to presume that the high will, and can appease and comfort half a soul?

Fire cannot join with another unless there's an opposite flame that burns equally great, else it will consume.

She still lives.

Fingers curl into fists. Too clear, too clear, memories till they are almost realities.

Fire, smoke, pain and rage, these she has felt before, have long been accustomed. Yet, the long corridor she now walks continues without end, and there are more, almost more than she can bear. Days relived- months, years- two lonely children in a field of grass, two fathers with the burdens from a world they cannot know. Silver rings that is exchanged in a secluded glade, a marriage with sky and grass and sea for witnesses.

Touches of fire, kisses of flame, till there is a conflagration between the twin souls, burning with their own separate fires that finally meld into one and seven stars are born of the incendiary desire to comfort, to soothe- a lone confidant amongst all the inexplicable ways of others.

Is _this_ the dream, but merely another dream to damn her, one full of the residues of a mad passion between the lonely daughter of the great smith Mahtan and the lonely son of the king?

But Nerdanel cannot stop, not yet, the relishing of pain, of once again being able to feel proves an addiction too dearly to be given up. The nostalgia of the world, of herself seems like a blessing of sorts, to remind her that many things are very once upon a more animated time. Daughter, lover, wife, mother…

Then the brighter lights come, tearing with their beauty. But how do the brilliance fade into that strange pallor of wane cheeks and bruised lips that no longer parted in answer when called? How the long elegant fingers turn from smooth to gaunt, as if being consumed even when eyes burns ever more clear?

Her own eyes are clouded for tears that should have been shed sustained her long sojourn. They must be, for otherwise she will not have let him leave, so ridiculously lost, like she is. Even now, they share the same fate.

The stroke of irony and fickleness that is a woman's tapestry, a tapestry she has yet to find. 

On and on, nothing barred the way, and yet, nothing can be reached.

Madness and despair! More and she will throw herself against the raven colored walls!

_Are you not comforted?_

_No!_

_Have you not found what you seek?_

_No!_

_Do you not live now you feel?_

_No!_

_Did you not find yourself?_

_No!_

_Walk on then._

In circuitous route that walks straight, like the legend of the bent world that will come, a prophecy too far away for she to care at the moment, she walks till numbness of the flesh focused the perception of the mind. Colder and colder, from toes to ankles, to knees to heart to head, she embraces herself with her own cold arms.

The last step, she knew it must be the last for the weariness that stays away while she waited comes back demanding a double toll, as if she has not paid enough, will drain the last iota of her strength.

And perhaps, that is for the best.

She steps forward, twice, and fell in to a swoon. 

---

More memories, or more dreams?

More pain, certainly too akin to her own to be his, he who everyone curses, and yet praises when the young sons and daughters asks of their written word. And yet neither tongue nor hand is under control; impulses that pierce too deep ruled supreme, magnified a thousand times in the physical rending of the metaphysical.

His hands become hers, narrowing slightly, more blanched of scars. She does not know why she throws the torch into the white ships, nor does she know why she laughs at her son when he merely asks for a friend. Have they not always been indulgent? Confused, a yearning, a sense of…regret?

Then it comes. Fated in its utter cruelty…

Cries, apologies and sorrows come too late, searching for the unfailing light till he is enshrouded within the darkest of them.

This mockery of merging flames proves his death, and the veriest insult from Morgoth, utter profanity! 

Trembling, a hoarse voice finally erupted from her throat, disrupting everything it seems. The air around her vibrated for a little while, and is still.

_Dead then? Truly?_ Her mind asks, bewilderment and bitterness on the rim of the glass.

_Perchance, likely, probable among the impossible._ Mandos averts her face. He do not want to see the shimmering fragments of glass beneath his feet that reflected off her eyes.

This silence sounds unbearable. Shattering, nonetheless, the walls do not echo. For a brief moment in eternity, the malignity of solitude becomes comprehensible. Atop of his seat, he thinks of the tiny patter of feet he has once heard while the droning evil lies deep imprisoned within this house, dormant but not dead, too far away from that.

_I do not see how it could be._ In frustration, her fingers tangled in her hair and realized how long it is. 

_It is woven. _Again, he said it without looking at her. Eyes, straying instead, to the door leading to the weaver who chooses the shiniest threads for the son she left behind. She has hosted a warm welcome, warm and sincere as only the bodiless can be, to the poor Teleri who come, puzzlement on their faces as the silver haired lady greets them with a gracious, if slightly apologetic, smile. Yes, they are kin. Welcome indeed! Never so lively before…light haired mariners, dark haired craftsmen, they come, and they know her, though they remember not themselves.

A temporary measure, Lorien assures him, a temporary happiness, as if that should somehow prove amelioration. But should one not think that as a caprice, a fickleness of the Aratar when they finally wake and desire to be reborn? Will they not need to remember to ask for forgiveness of each other slain unjustly? Namo and Irmo, two of the Feanturi so ever merciful…

_And that is all you can say?_ Her voice startles him, her question do not.

_Yes._ Doom he is only partly, and true doom he has never wished to be though he knows, far too much.

_Should I be angered, or hurt at your reply?_ Blood blossomed from beneath her clenched fingers.

_Child, I am not responsible for them. _

Gashes for wounds, and death for hurt, Mandos grieves only little less than the farseeing Manwe. The dead, the misbegotten, they haunt his thoughts and sight. Pronounce thy judgment! Doomsman of the Valar indeed! And so, he will say nothing when Manwe does not.

_Then who is?_

_Our Father._

_Then I will find Him. _Her face, which has never be counted as one of the fairest among the measures of her own people now radiated a terrible beauty, utterly fell. For, she searches for God.

_You can journey no further._ He said, and as he is Mandos, he cannot lie.

_Then I will not leave till I find him. _A way from the depth to the height, the severest darkness to the most worshipful light, what logic it is. 

_You cannot._ Horror struck with the notion, a chord jars within him. Stopped, empty grounds he recognizes not.

_How can I find him? _She bites her lower lip.

_Who are you trying to find…._ Utterly inexplicable the goal seems.__

_How can I find him? _

Manods does not speak. He frowns instead, vacillating between the two paths she can take, and the one she will choose.

He will give her no answers that she can see, knowing that the blank gaze shall be forever impossible to read.  So long she has watched, waited, stayed her hands even when everything bends and breaks, all for naught. Furthermore, he is withholding something.

What can there to be withheld? Mother of seven, she has already seen, and bore all the tragedies. Except they do not feel like tragedies although a part of her told that it, they should.

_I will not leave until I find him,_ she says, and the difference between a child of Iluvatar and an Ainur is true.

He bows his head into his hands, and is unseen. 

--

With a violent shudder, Nerdanel wakes from the cold floors and find her strength renewed.

The journey has not yet ended, the bitter draught lingers in her mouth still, tasting of tears and blood.

Pitiless as the sun, the walls stared at her, almost blinding in its emptiness till she believes that it is empty. A finger reached into it, then an arm, then she entered.

Another hall, not dark but light, pastel colors enwrought with vividness, and the walls are soft with a ghostly fabric.

A woman sits in front of a loom, weaving, yet the instrument is silent.

_What leads you here? _Vaire's handmaiden asks without turning back, long nimble fingers working on the weave that grows beneath her hands in an intricate dance of bright mist.

_Weariness. _Nerdanel answered; surely you must understand. But the growth of the new fabric continued.

_For what?_

For having give birth to seven sons, for letting them seep her strength, for joining with another yet having to let him go… Instead she said, _the darkening of the lights._

Perceptive without looking, for she sees her thoughts from beneath her fingers. She has woven them herself._ From memories then?_

Nerdanel is silent, and nods. 

_What do you want?_

_I don't know._

_Come and see then._

_I already know._

_You felt, but you have not seen._

_Can there be any difference?_

_Try. _Miriel said, hands still working.

With trepidation Nerdanel leaned over and sees her eldest son in the care of Findekano. The pictures moves, and she watches him become healthful, and yet a hand is missing on the form of her well-made son. She reached out a hand to touch his face and calls to him, softly. So fragile he seems under her eyes she is afraid that a breath will carry him away.

He cannot hear you, and pray do not touch. 

Alive, and perhaps she should be content with that. Nerdanel cannot withdraw her bloody hand when the faces of her beloved hovers so near, so real, as their lives unfolds before her eyes.

_Are you appeased?_

_But better perhaps if I have never lived than to suffer so greatly, all for nothing at the end. I saw the smoke, I saw the ashes, accomplishing nothing…destroyed.._

_Thus is the fate of Arda marred._

Nerdanel finally withdrew her fingers and steps away. She did not anymore, and Miriel cares not to invite her to see Dagor Bragollach, Arnaeth Arnoediad…nor the fate of men that has been concealed to all eyes save those of Doom.  

_Let me sit with you. _Nerdanel says.

_I cannot. _

_Wherefore? _She cannot live, else she would not be here.

_You are hroa and fea._ There is more, _You would not be able to bear it all _but Vaire's voice has become more insistent, and the fates of the mighty kingdoms of Middle Earth fills Miriel's heart with grief; she has seen each one mature from child to man, their loves and hates, and so flitting are the recent age of men that emotions of life ended in turbulence scarcely ere they begin. 

_Then I shall cast off my hroa._

_You cannot._

_You did._

_But I was not made to live, as you are. _Who else can bridge a rift between two people whether through hate or love? 

Nerdanel do not believe her. Too many rumors, too many thoughts, the reason for her leave sleeps besides her every night, there is small difference between Miriel Serinde's weariness and her own.

She considers this and wonders whether an audience with Vaire is possible, the very proof that she cannot cast off her hroa- not knowing that the Vala is with her all this time, her silent, invisible presence holding close the gates between destinies known and unknown. 

Many laws are already broken in the comings and goings…__

_What purpose can be there if I return. _What purpose is there? Do they expect her to carry on as before when every glance shows them what are irreplaceably amiss.__

She kneels beside the mother of her husband, exasperated, tired, and in need. A sore desire rises in her to see the products of the loom, but she restrains herself.

_I want to find him. _She ignores the arrased walls, cloths that are mists, she thinks to herself.

The weaver do not cease in her weaving. _Who, Illuvatar or Feanaro?_

_I want answers._

_You would not understand them._

_I would try._

_Why did you come here then, and not Taniquetil? _

_My feet leads me here, and I will stay till I can learn._

The swift hands of the Serinde pauses at a better moment- the needle and the loom forming a passage of a lost time in a fortress of stone where dwarven and elven masons works peacefully, in the pure joy of the labor of their crafts.

_He is not here. _She finally says and resumes her walk, already losing her place_, Give up, you should not find the answers._

_You tell me those though you know me well._

_Yes, I do tell you this, for you will find neither one here. Let me work in peace._

Nerdanel is desperate. _There is no peace in your work. Everlasting darkness for the everlasting light, it is too cruel._

_The Houses of the Dead are many._ Miriel says, her words swift as fingers dances ever faster, making for lost time.

Nerdanel stands.

_I will search every single one. _

_He is searching for you as well._ A different voice says this.

_Nienna! Third of the Feanturi..._

_Come, come dear little child, brother Aule pleaded for you, and Manwe is sorry, as am I. I will take you to him._

_Have him answer your questions, my son's wife!_ Miriel's tears freezes before escaping, as her heart, which is never stone, twinges terribly within her. For the shadow moonlight of indigo and white threads has unveiled a cold accusation from the last dead of her blood.

_He will. _Nerdanel says as she walks with Nienna to meet Feanor at some strangely turned path.


End file.
